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Alamogordo is a small city in southern New Mexico. It’s the gateway to White Sands National Park and has a handful of interesting attractions.
History
Alamogordo was founded in 1898 and incorporated in 1912. Its name means “fat cottonwood” in Spanish. Before that, it had been inhabited by the Mescalero Apache since before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1534.
The largest employer in the city is Holloman Air Force Base. It also has deep ties to the Trinity atomic bomb test in 1945, which took place in what is now the White Sands Missile Range.
Downtown
We stopped in Alamogordo after a fun day of sledding on the sand dunes at White Sands. We honestly didn’t have much planned, and only visited one attraction, the New Mexico Museum of Space History, which is covered in another entry.
Our short exploration of the city was limited to New York Avenue in the historic downtown. It has a few buildings dating back to the early 20th century. The one that stood out the most to us was the FM Avis Block, built in 1903.
Motel 6
We stayed at the Motel 6 Alamogordo. For a Motel 6, it actually wasn’t bad at all. The rooms were surprisingly cleaner than expected, and there were several chain restaurants nearby to choose from.
